Arcade Fire play first gig since COVID pandemic

Arcade Fire have performed their first gig since the COVID pandemic began.

The band’s frontman Win Butler and multi-instrumentalist Régine Chassagne were on stage at Las Vegas’ Zarkana Theater on Saturday night (December 11) for Gala Games’ Galaverse crypto party.

The band’s last in-person show was when they headlined New Orleans’ Mahalia Jackson Theater in February 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to take hold, according to Stereogum.

Maroon 5, Billy Idol, Kings Of Leon, Snoop Dogg, Alice Cooper and Steve Aoki also performed at the event described as a “an immersive event for the community to celebrate the Gala Games metaverse”. Gala Games describes itself as “the leaders in play-to-earn, blockchain, and NFT gaming”.

Footage from the event shows Butler and Chassagne plying Arcade Fire songs including ‘My Body Is A Cage’ from 2007’s ‘Neon Bible‘ and ‘Everything Now’ from their latest album of the same name, which was released in 2017.

“You know that dream that you have where you’re, like, in Las Vegas and your band’s not there and you’re about to sing, and then you turn around and there’s a bunch of people eating dinner? Yeah, it’s a fucked up dream,” Butler said while introducing ‘My Body Is A Cage’. See footage below.

Earlier this year the band shared a new 45-minute song titled ‘Memories of the Age of Anxiety’ for a meditation and sleep app. The instrumental was created for the Headspace app, which offers meditation and mindfulness skills “on everything from managing stress and everyday anxiety to sleep, focus and mind-body health”.

In October 2020 Butler told Rick Rubin’s Broken Record podcast that the band had recorded “two or three” albums during the pandemic.

Related Posts